the same ground, or that out-of-town agencies must be badgered to
reinvestigate old clues. But the frame of mind that pigeonholes the
whole matter as having been attended to must be shunned by the social
worker, who should be always on the alert for new clues and prompt to
follow them up. An example of a vigorous and persistent search for a
deserter is taken from the files of the National Desertion Bureau.[19]
Adolph R. deserted his wife and their six little children on
September 1, 1912. He was traced to Philadelphia, but had left there
the day before the tidings reached New York. Information was
obtained from fellow-employes which led to the belief that he had
gone to Tampa, Florida. Inquiry was directed to the rabbi in that
city, but again the information was disheartening, since it
disclosed the fact that once more R. had "left the day before." The
rabbi telegraphed that the deserter had evidently gone to Lakewood,
Florida, and that he could be found in that place. Immediately the
Bureau dispatched a telegram to its representative there, only to
find that R. had merely passed through Lakewood en route to Bartow,
Florida. When the inquiry reached Bartow it was learned that R. had
left a few days before, and that he was on his way to Memphis,
Tennessee. The Jewish Charities of Memphis made investigation at the
cigar factories of that city, but reported that no person bearing
the name of R. or resembling him had been seen in their city. No
further clue to his whereabouts could be secured.
Months later R. applied to the Jewish Charities of Louisville for
transportation to New York, making an entirely false statement about
his family.
This statement was telegraphed to the Bureau and no time was lost in
securing a warrant. Louisville was notified by wire to arrest, but
again a telegram came: "Adolph R. left city. Learned from
Cigarmakers' Union headquarters he went to Cincinnati. Wire Joe
Rapp, 1316 Walnut Street, Cincinnati Union Headquarters. Man said he
was going to Cincinnati or Indianapolis. Man joined union Richmond,
Va., November 19, 1911, and reports to union in all cities." The
Desertion Bureau immediately telegraphed to Cincinnati and
Indianapolis. The United Jewish Charities of Cincinnati working
together with the labor union lost little time in effecting his
arrest.
Many theories about family desertion have suffered a change in recent
years. One of these relates to the "collusive desertion." Social workers
in training used formerly to be taught that the first place to look for
the deserter was around the corner, where he could slip back into the
house and partake of charitable bounty or, at the very least, keep close
watch of his family and return if any serious danger threatened them.
Although the collusive desertion seems to have been a frequent happening
in the past, there is almost unanimous testimony from case workers at
the present time that it is not common. "I don't come across an instance
once a year," said one case worker.
Another, after searching her memory, recalled what seemed to her one
instance of real collusion. A woman, pregnant and seeming to be in
great destitution, applied to a family social work society in a
small city for help. Careful search did not discover the man's
whereabouts--he seemed to have disappeared without leaving a trace,
and his wife professed ignorance. Some two weeks after this the
visitor, calling late, met a man on the stairs who proved to be the
missing husband. Times were hard and he was out of a job, so he had
taken to the attic of their house, and had kept so strictly
_incommunicado_ that not only the society but the neighbors had been
deceived.
Out of twenty or more case workers in different cities whose experience
was sought on this point, nearly all felt that the warnings against
possible collusion which used to be given to young workers no longer
needed to be emphasized. Testimony in the other direction is, however,
advanced by the National Desertion Bureau, which found that about 10 per
cent of the applications made in 1910 to the United Hebrew Charities of
New York for relief because of desertion were collusive.
It should be said, however, that one form of collusion is common to the
experience of case workers--that of the wife who knows where her
husband is, or has a very good idea, but does not want him to return
and so keeps her knowledge to herself. "In two of our regular allowance
families," writes the case supervisor of a family agency, "we
discovered--one quite incidentally, one after the allowance had been
discontinued for other reasons--that the wife had had reports regarding
the man which we might have followed up had we known of them earlier. It
could hardly be called collusion--it was mere indifference." A probation
officer writes:
"At the present time we have under investigation a family where the
man has been away from home for two years and his whereabouts during
the last year have been known to his wife. He has been living in a
suburb of the city and working steadily during that time. The woman
has received adequate aid from public and private organizations. She
has been content to accept that rather than notify the authorities
and have her husband required to meet the responsibility. The man on
his part was aware that his family was being supported, and while
there was no agreement between the parties regarding it,
nevertheless the arrangement apparently met with mutual approval."
To guard against this and similar omissions on the woman's part, more
than one agency which deals with family desertion requires the deserted
wife to sign an affidavit that she has given all the information she
possesses.
Although in practice the possibility of a collusive desertion is not the
first and most important thing to keep in mind, it is frequent enough
not to be entirely forgotten. And for yet other reasons it is well to
keep a watchful eye upon the neighborhood in which the family is living
for reports about the man. Often obscure impulses seem to bring him
back; jealousy of the wife or a desire to show himself in a spirit of
bravado, or even sometimes a fugitive affection for the children he has
abandoned may cause him to appear in the neighborhood. "The deserter,
like the murderer, harks back to the scene of his misdeeds" was the
generalization of one district secretary.
Even when he does not appear in the flesh the deserter may seek news of
his family. "One deserter was found through the Attendance Department
[of the public school system] to which he wrote after a three years'
absence asking the address of one of the children of whom he was
especially fond."
There is little in the literature of the subject covering methods of
discovering deserters, nor do case workers generally appear to have
developed a special technique. The decided reaction against detective
methods which has been apparent in the profession during later years may
help to explain this fact. Most social workers feel a subconscious sense
of injustice in having to do this work at all, since it is properly a
function of the police. Prosecutors and police officials generally take
very little interest in following up deserters, and have little idea of
giving any treatment to the deserter who has been found other than
arraignment and conviction. It is difficult for the probation officer or
the family case worker to hold up the machinery of the law, once it has
been started, and to do this long enough to find out whether some other
form of treatment best suits the case. For these reasons the social
worker usually prefers to do or else is forced to do the work of the
detective in desertion cases up to the point where arrest is in his
judgment necessary.
A probation officer in D---- found that he could not work through
the local police in searching for a certain deserter, because the
missing man's political affiliations made them friendly to him. The
probation officer knew in a general way that the man was likely to
be in the city of S---- in the same state, so he secured a warrant
and sent it with such slight clues as were at hand, to a probation
officer of that city who was successful in the search. Avoiding the
usual procedure, the warrant was served by the police in S----.
"Several instances of this kind have occurred lately," writes the
probation officer at D----.
The necessity of doing the detective's work raises at once the question
of how far the social worker can afford to adopt the detective's
methods. If reformation of the man is the end sought it would seem an
axiom that he must be given from the first every reason to believe that
the social worker will play fair. "We are very careful never to break a
promise we have made to a man," says an agency which deals with many
deserters. The same agency, as illustration of its own methods in
seeking deserting men, instances the case of a man who was being
shielded by his sister, but was discovered by an officer who scraped
acquaintance with her little boy and asked innocently, "Where's your
uncle Jack now?" In another case the officer learned of a man's
whereabouts through his relatives by representing himself as a lawyer's
clerk calling about a legacy which had been left the man. In still
another case, reported by a different agency, a man who had deserted his
family was known to be receiving mail through the general delivery of
another city. It was ascertained that he was writing to a woman in his
home town. A letter was sent to him in care of General Delivery asking
him to meet the writer (who was represented to be the young woman with
whom he was corresponding). The wife was sent to that city and she and
the local probation officer met the man and served the warrant.
There is, of course, something to be said in favor of the use of such
methods. The protection of the weak and helpless may justify, in certain
circumstances, any subterfuge. But the _detective_ who arrests the
criminal in ways like these is seeking his punishment and nothing else.
There is no thought in that case of establishing personal relations and
effecting the long, slow process of reformation. When social workers use
such methods it should be in the full realization that they are
foregoing any future advantage of straight dealing with the man. To
capture a man by a trick is to declare war on him; and, in his mind, the
social worker and the policeman then stand in the same place, "I'd have
him there to meet you," said a deserter's chum to a woman visitor, "if I
wasn't sure, in spite of your straight talk, you'd have a bull waiting
behind a tree."[20]
If it is a first desertion, or if there is room for doubt whether an
accident may have befallen the man, police and hospital records should
be looked up.
A woman with four children applied to a charity organization
society, saying her husband had disappeared. There was a rumor that
someone had seen him fall off the dock while intoxicated, but no
attempt had been made to confirm this and the family was treated as
a deserted family for some months, until the man's body was found in
the river and identified.
If there have been previous desertions, it is extremely important to
secure their history. The reasons that moved the man once are likely to
do so again, and he is apt to return to his former haunts and be seen by
former friends and acquaintances.
The deserting man, unless he elopes with another woman, generally goes
to some cheap lodging house or, if of foreign birth, he may seek out the
quarter where those of his nationality reside and become a lodger in a
family in which his native tongue is spoken. Hence, a canvass of the
lodging houses--armed with a photograph if possible--is a desirable
first step. All of the social worker's casual acquaintance with the
foreign quarters of his city comes into play in the search. If the man
is in the city some "landsmann," some "paesano" has seen him, and knows
where he is to be found. It may even narrow down to finding the
particular house on the particular street where the immigrants from a
particular village in Sicily or Galicia have their abode. The pool-rooms
and saloons of the district can often be made to yield information,
especially if a man visitor can canvass them. In dealing in this way
with mere acquaintances of the man, it is usually not necessary for the
social worker to tell who he himself is or to state the purpose of his
inquiry. In talking with relatives or close friends, however, it is
often best to lay all cards on the table and convince one's listener
first of all that the man sought will have fair treatment and a chance
to state his side of the case before any proceedings are begun against
him.
Even a relative who has never been seen may sometimes be induced to act
effectively.
A man who deserted his wife and family was reported to have gone to
his brother in another city. Nothing definite was known of the
brother except that he was a telephone lineman. No address could be
secured through the company, but they agreed to forward a letter to
this relative. He never answered; shortly, however, the deserter
reappeared, having been persuaded to return voluntarily by the
brother to whom the letter had been addressed.
During the war local draft boards were of the greatest assistance in
finding deserting men. Election records too have been of real value in
the case of men who were voters. Passports and immigration records may
in some instances yield information helpful in establishing whereabouts.
Where there is actually a warrant out for the man's arrest, the active
co-operation of the postal authorities can sometimes be secured in
furnishing return addresses on envelopes delivered to persons with whom
the culprit is known to be in correspondence.
Problems of family desertion involving men in service during the war
were in the main handled by the Red Cross Home Service. Before the war,
private case working agencies had learned that the regular Army and the
Navy often seemed desirable havens to would-be family deserters. The
difficulties of finding them there were great, owing to the fact that
they often enlisted as single men under an assumed name. It has usually
been possible to gain excellent co-operation from the military
authorities if there are any clues whatever.
The desertion bureau of a family social work society learned that a
deserting man had expressed a desire long before he left his family
to enlist in the Army. Several letters were exchanged with the War
Department, and the man was finally found to be with a company
serving in the Canal Zone. As he had made misrepresentations when he
enlisted, the War Department was willing to transfer him from Panama
to a camp within the limits of the city where the desertion had
taken place and there discharge him. This brought the absconder
within the jurisdiction of the local courts and made it possible to
arrest him as soon as he was outside the bounds of the camp.
It will repay the visitor to make not only a careful study of the
deserting man's employment history but also to learn something about the
trade he follows. A cloakmaker, for instance, who deserts in New York
City is likely to be found in Cleveland, for these are the two centers
of the cloak branch of the garment trade. Certain seasonal occupations
give the periodical deserter a great opportunity. Among these are hop
picking, berry picking, and lumbering. The amusement parks near the
large cities also furnish occupation for the seasonal deserter. The case
worker cannot be expected to have such knowledge at his finger-tips, but
he can go to people who know about the fluctuations of particular
trades--to employers, union officials or fellow-workmen who may throw
light on a deserter's movements. The story of Adolph R.[21] is an
excellent illustration of the help that may be obtained from trades
unions and from fellow-workmen. A family welfare bureau in a western
city writes:
"In one instance a blacksmith's union published the picture of the
deserting man in its official journal and asked that information
regarding him be sent to the local unit here. This proved
successful. In another instance a union gave us access to its books
and helped us to trace all the men of a given name listed there. By
this means we found the man we were looking for. One man, a
vaudeville performer, we traced through the _Bill Board_ (a trade
paper) by discovering the movements of the show with which he had
been connected."
Another society succeeded in getting a certain trade union to post a
description and photograph of a missing man on its bulletin boards. This
aided in finding the man. Fraternal orders may be; used in the same way,
though for many reasons they cannot be so helpful as the trades unions.
Employment agencies should not be forgotten in seeking to trace a man
through his industrial record. The extension of the federal employment
service, with free inter-city communication, should be of assistance in
getting upon the track of deserters.
The co-operation of newspapers can be secured to good effect in tracing
missing men.
Herbert McCann, who had been doing railway construction in Russia,
returned to this country and disappeared while en route from an
eastern city to his home in Canada. There was reason to think that
he might have left the train in an intoxicated condition at an
important junction point; and the family social agency of that city
was asked to trace him. No information was secured from the police,
lodging houses, employment agencies, etc., and finally the following
advertisement was inserted in the local paper: "_Information
Wanted_--Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Herbert McCann, Montreal,
who returned from Russia in June, will confer a favor upon his
family by notifying Social Service Building, 34 Grand Street." Six
days later a reply was received from a man in a nearby town, and
McCann was found at work in a factory there.
More than upon any other method the National Desertion Bureau depends on
the publication of pictures and short newspaper paragraphs. As this
Bureau deals entirely with Jewish deserters, it works chiefly through
the Yiddish newspapers. Its "Gallery of Missing Husbands" is a regular
weekly feature in some of the better known of these journals, and
attracts increasingly wide attention. The Bureau estimates that 70 per
cent of the deserters which it finds are discovered through the
publication of pictures. It should be remembered, however, that this
Bureau is dealing with a selected group, who know a great deal about one
another, live closely together, follow in the main only a few trades,
and read only a limited number of foreign-language newspapers. Whether
anything like the same results could be obtained by the same methods
applied to deserting husbands of many different national and social
backgrounds is open to question.
Since most deserters leave the city, if not the state, the social worker
who is dealing with the family problem is often not the same person to
whom is delegated the task of finding the man. This fact makes necessary
the most careful and sympathetic co-operation between the social workers
or agencies, which must work together at long range upon the problem. In
the case of Herbert McCann, just cited, not less than four family social
work societies were concerned--three in the United States and one in
Canada. This necessitated keeping in the closest touch, by letter and
telegram, so that each was informed of the doings of the others. Such a
piece of work calls for a common body of experience and technique among
the workers concerned, amounting almost to an unwritten understanding
as to how the work should be done. Nothing makes more fascinating
reading than the record of a quick, touch-and-go investigation, such as
is presented in the finding of a deserter conducted by skilled case
workers who are accustomed to work together. Much can, under these
circumstances, be taken for granted or left to the discretion of the
worker or agency whose help is being sought. There are instances,
however, where no such common understanding exists, and where the
home-town agency has to work through people with little social training
or with training of a type which definitely unfits them properly to
approach the deserting man. It is a distressing experience to know that
a man has slipped through one's fingers, been frightened off or
alienated, by poor work at the other end. Are there any ways to reduce
the number of these mischances?
Even with the closest co-operation among case workers of ability in
different cities the results are not always as favorable, for obvious
reasons, as if the person who knows the family were the one to find and
interview the man. More and more it is realized that money and time
spent in going to nearby cities to do one's own investigating is well
spent. There used to be a feeling on the part of the kindred society
whose territory was thus invaded that this action argued lack of
confidence in its work; but as the importance of the personal contact
has been more widely recognized this feeling has disappeared. It may be
said that a worker who goes to a strange city is handicapped by her lack
of knowledge of local conditions. This is of course true, and it may
easily be a question of how great an advantage will be gained by the
journey. The worker from the man's home town can, however, go far toward
overcoming the handicap of unfamiliarity with the place, as well as
toward dispelling any sense of injury in the mind of a professional
colleague, by calling first at the office of the local agency and
talking the problem over thoroughly, consulting the map and getting what
hints the local agency may be able to furnish. The first question to ask
oneself, therefore, is "Will it not be worth while to go myself?"
If for geographical or other reasons this is impracticable, the next
thing that should receive careful consideration is the type of letter to
be written. If the situation is very emergent (as in the case of Adolph
R. cited earlier), the request may have to be sent by telegraph; but
even in a telegram it is possible to convey some detail. To try to save
money by confining oneself to ten words is unwise. If time admits, a
letter is more desirable, and the principle of its construction is as
simple as the Golden Rule--give the other person all the information you
would like to have if you were receiving the letter. Where the
correspondent is not a trained social worker, very specific suggestions
and directions should be given as to how you wish the man dealt with if
found.
There might also be laid down a Golden Rule for recipients of requests
from out-of-town that missing men be traced. "Give the request
right-of-way over your regular work, and send back as prompt and as full
a reply as you would wish yourself" might adequately cover the case. A
reply which contains a history of actual steps taken as well as results
gained, is more satisfactory than one which does not. Good case workers
believe in reciprocity and treat their neighbor's problem as their own.
"We heard that a man we were interested in was in the vicinity of a
certain city, and in the effort to trace him wrote to the charity
organization society in that place, but without success. Several months
later the charity organization society saw an item in a newspaper to the
effect that the man had been interned as an enemy alien, and notified
us. (This shows no cleverness on our part, but good work by the other
society.)"
FOOTNOTES:
[17] The National Desertion Bureau, 356 Second Avenue, New York, acts in
a legal advisory capacity to Jewish organizations in matters of domestic
relations; it also seeks out Jewish family deserters, with a view to
assuring their rehabilitation or, failing this, their punishment.
[18] C.C. Carstens, Proceedings of the Fifth New York State Conference
of Charities and Correction, 1904, p. 196.
[19] See p. 65, footnote.
[20] This paragraph was submitted to the two agencies which furnished
the illustrations. Their replies are in part as follows: